Tomb Raider: Into Legend
by lazarus wolf
Summary: THE SEQUEL TO MASK OF THE DREAMER. THE CHAPTERS I'LL DO TELL WHAT HAPPEN TO LARA BEFORE SHE ARRIVES IN HAWAII. I'LL FINISH THE REST AFTER I FINISH MASK. This story starts just after the reboot. Those responsible for the horrors of Yamatai return to find their work undone. Lara is relentlessly hunted by them as she begins her search for her parents. THIS WILL HAVE LARA/SAM -LATER ON
1. First Blood

**This chapter, and the next few are safe to read. They take place before Lara heads to Hawaii. Chapter 2 is from Lara's pov.**

YAMATAI

He had made it to the shore of the island without incident, odd for this island. It was good to not be dragged into the beach, but still - odd. The higher-ups painted this deployment as a blessing for serving with distinction - a select few ever got to protect the interests on this rock. To die serving as caretaker to their greatest prize: Himiko, or as they referenced their old enemy's tortured soul in communiques, the Star.

He smiled as he pulled his oxygen tanks off, dropped them and his mask under a rusted hunk of airplane wing, pulled his wetsuit from his lean, fifty-five year old frame, and began stripping the clothes from some masked corpse of roughly his size. convenience was a blessing he never let a little thing like desecrating a corpse get in the way of. He couldn't hope for a better way to get accepted by the islands new inhabitants - before he poisoned them to death. He didn't feel this optimistic for long; it started with his choice of clothing, and went down hill real fast.

It was a good fit, but it was only after he looked at the naked body that he realized his costume would fool no one: a hole, the size of a half-dollar, was clearly visible between his deceased benefactors shoulder blades. So much for blending in. His disappointments had only just begun.

He looked around the beach... more fresh bodies; all of them dressed like his freshly naked cadaver, their clothes even more useless: bullet riddled and blood soaked. It got worse as he moved inland. But what happened next truly ruined his day.

The sky above the island suddenly exploded... into brilliant sunlight.

This isn't what he wanted to see, ever, over this island - clear, sun lit sky over every inch of the heavens. He looked up at the suddenly clear blue canopy and trembled... was SHE gone? He started to run toward the monastery when he slipped. He fell on his back, his hands splattered into a puddle of thick, viscus liquid. He looked at his hand as he lifted it from the ground, and gasped. What happened here?

Blood, the thick red liquid covered the ground, the walls, it flowed in the streams till the clear water ran as crimson as vein. As his panicked eyes focused with the light of the sun illuminating the earth around him, he staggered backward, and gaped at his now visible surroundings in terror. The dead bodies on the beach were but a portent to the charnel house he now strode through.

The blood was inches deep in some places. Thick, red, freshly spilled blood. It all but saturated the island; seeping out of an army of men, well armed and organized, slaughtered by an unknown threat. He puzzled at the bodies, their frighteningly effortlessly dispatched appearance: some hacked with the same pointed pick-like implement, others shot square in the head - the lucky ones.

There were other bodies that looked like whoever killed them wanted them to be a message... try to run. These bodies were riddled with bullets, from groin to gullet; and the faces, what little was left, were barely recognizable as having been men.

This was clearly the work of a group of élite soldiers, he surmised, the best men in the military of whatever country they were from. But the butchery, it chilled him to his core.

He trembled as he touched half a skull blown apart by a shotgun blast positioned under the chin of the victim. He studied the extensive injuries delivered before the kill. What professional soldiers did this? It was as if the assailant was enjoying playing with their victim, as if they wanted to relish the fear. What were they up against?

He lifted a cell phone from a watertight bag, and stared at its glowing bars in astonishment... a signal - here... SHE was gone.

He pressed a single button and had to suppress a nervous laugh as the call went through without a single pause.

"What?" Came the gruff, English accented man's voice, clear as if the person on the other end called from a yard away.

"You will never guess where I'm calling from,"he said, as he looked over the carnage in growing unease.

"Playing games?," was the irate response, "Don't waste my..."

"Yamatai." he interrupted.

The silence on the other end of the phone was palpable. When the voice spoke again, the nervous stutter in it added to his sense of trepidation, "Im- Impossible... your charts are off!"

He shook his head, and almost burst out laughing in his anxiety"NO, my charts were not off. Trust me. Trace the phone... I'll wait." He gazed down at a pile of ashes overlooking the sea, reached down and pulled out a pair of dog tags, and looked them over carefully.

"Fuck," the voice whispered in stunned disbelief, "She's gone? The Star is... fuck! Get out of there! Before the authorities show up!"

"Hold on," he said as he read the name,"Find out what you can about a Conrad Roth, British royal Marine Commando. There has been a slaughter here, and no, the bitch's minions didn't do it. Theres a group of squatters on this rock, and the whole slew of them were splayed by an unknown team of élite killers... this Roth, he may be one of them. Just run it."

"What makes you sure? Maybe he's just another one of the others killed."

"No," he said as he kicked the dust, "They gave him a pyre. No one else was given that honor - just run the name through our London contacts and see what you get. If the British did this we are screwed. We need to pull up..."

The sputter of a struggling boat engine could be heard over the gulls and sea crashing into the reefs, wrecks and shore."Hold on," he said as he lifted a small pair of binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the water for the source of the sound. "You are fucking kidding me," he whispered as he sighted his quarry.A rusted PT boat, circa 1933, slid out from an inlet down the coast, and into the open waters of the Sea of Japan. He touched a button on the top of the binoculars, and the view through them closed to inches from the faces on the ship. Another button press highlighted each one of the weary people, and gave a detailed description and bio of each. He finally reached the most battered of them: a young woman of some twenty years, torn tank-top, and jeans; heavily bandaged; scars covered her bare arms, the exposed skin of her ample breast, and a thick patch of dried blood covered the lower left side of her shirt, just above her hip. She turned to look at the island, and right at him.

He gasped at the sight of her blooded, dirt covered face - she was stunning. He hit the button; her bio streamed out on the side of her image. He smiled broadly, "well, well, well... the prodigal daughter..."

"What!?" the voice on the phone asked impatiently.

"A possible ray of hope, and a chance for a little payback for Croatia. It may well be that all of this is easily resolvable. I think Richard Croft's daughter is taking after her daddy. SHE is the one we're after for this."

"A girl? Are you cracked?"

"I'm looking right at her at this moment. Beautiful girl, nice figure, covered in blood and scars, and what may well be at least one bullet wound. Maybe there were more with her when this fight started; but she looks to be the most beat up. She seems to be as invincible as Daddy... till now."

"Deal with her."

"Love to. Just one problem: I'm on this fucking rock,and I need to destroy all remaining evidence of our interests in this scrap yard before they get to civilization; besides, she is on a fucking boat three miles away, and getting further away by the second. She is YOUR problem."

"You think she knows about us? Our 'interests' there?"

"Can you risk it? Our last agent here was that stupid fuck Collins. He was obsessed with his fucking GPS trackers, scattering them like seeds... and they're gone. I can't find one. I have a feeling I know where they are. No Croft can resist something shiny. I have the code to track them in my phone. I'll text it to you. If she has them, we need to resolve this issue quickly." He thought for a moment, "Make it clean. Make it look natural. perhaps she succumbs to her injuries before she talks to the authorities. Lets just be clear about one thing: as long as she lives, we risk exposure, we risk loosing millenniums of history. Send HIM."

"Who?"

"That countryman of yours... old softy. Just follow-up with a small contingency to handle the other three, and for the unlikely event he fails. I'll finish here. By the time I'm done nothing they say will be provable. I'll see you in Rome. See that she's dead first, no matter how long, or whatever it takes... or we'll all be"


	2. Old Softy

**THIS CHAPTER IS A PREQUEL TO THE EVENTS OF M.O.T.D.. Remember... Lara is bi-sexual, and has not gone to Hawaii yet.**

OKINAWA, JAPAN - THREE DAYS LATER

Alone again... naturally. Yet it felt right. The rest had their families to go to, she had a family fortune sitting in escrow by her uncle till she came home and took it over. Well, that and her prizes, and new friend... Lara Croft - death dealer. But dancing into the dark recesses of her mind as she lay alone on the bed of her hotel suite was as bad as the events that brought her to the place.

She tried turning on the tv, but got nothing on it to distract her. All of it meaningless to her now. She checked her scars, re-bandaged some, then stared into her own eyes, and saw not the madness she was sure would be staring back, but something else... something her, and yet not.

She failed to see sorrow for the innocent women slaughtered; nor glimpsed self recrimination, disgust, for the sheer ecstasy she took in killing their murderers... the Solari. All she saw was her own eyes looking coldly back. What was wrong with her? Was she simply in shock? Or was she simply a killer, plain and simple, and all that had happened on Yamatai was she was simply permitted to be 'herself' without penalty?

The memories of it all, all she had done, sent no shivers through her body...THAT fact made her uneasy. She decided to get out of the room before she started to think any further on this unsettling calm pervading her. She pulled off her torn outer shirt and cut her jeans at mid-thigh evenly to look like denim shorts, and went down to the hotel bar.

The place was almost vacant, a fact that made her happy, but as man after man started filing in, having caught a glimpse of her as they passed through the lobby, she began feeling more at ease with her homicidal impulse.

She was sitting in front of five different drinks, all the wrong one, bought for her by five different men, none of whom were even remotely her type... the type who understood a woman's moods and respected her wish for privacy. She was about to just walk out... until HE walked in. Something inside her, beyond her will, stopped her, and she went with it.

He stood six feet two inches tall, lean at the waist, broad at the shoulders and chest, what a genetic melding of Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan would look like if it were twenty-five and mothered by Kelly Brooke. He was dressed in a black, silk dress jacket, matching slacks and a white silk dress shirt, open to his clavicle. HE was astonishingly HER type... physically. Still, he was a mirage, married, gay(most likely) or would see her as just one more of no doubt many conquests. She would soon find out, as he approached.

She steeled herself as he sat on the stool next to her and smiled politely before turning to the bartender.

"Fosters, my good man," he all but commanded in a confident, easy tone, his soothing deep voice carrying his English accent was almost calming, "Pint glass, fill to about four fingers shy of the lip, and switch that telly to BBC Sports and I'll handle the hecklers. There is three thousand Yen in it for you if you do it three minutes ago... three hundred if you do it now."

The balls on this joker! She glared at him in the mirror as he stared up at the HD screen with his light blue eyes, and stray strands of his short black hair falling over his eyebrows.

He looked at her reflection.

She turned away quickly as her pupils dilated.

He smirked as the bartender placed the beer in front of him and he slid the three hundred across.

She forced herself to look away as he suddenly turned to her. She didn't like to be rude to a complete stranger, but she wasn't about to let herself become a drunken buddy confession... "I like girls," she said directly without looking him in the eyes."

"And you hate straight Jager," he said, taking one of the shots from in front of her, "TWO things we have in common already." He dropped the shot into the beer, and swallowed half of it in a matter of seconds

In spite of herself, she turned and smiled at him, as he finished and leaned back looking at the ceiling, "Jager Bomb, oh my God... you are extraordinary, and foolish."

He smiled at her, "Where am I...?"

She giggled, "Heaven? Paradise? What cheesy line do you have for me mad man?"

"Line? Wha!? I am insulted that you would insinuate such shenanigans on my part... I am hurt, hurt and... well hurt and deeply, deeply insulted... You need to make it up to me."

"OH, Do I? How, pray tell, shall I do that?" She found herself leaning into him... What was she thinking?

"Kiss that girl over there," he said with a mischievous grin that she found captivating.

She turned and looked at the woman he was pointing at. She was all of twenty-three, beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, and staring at her in such a way that was all too familiar to her... lustful, predatory, too much like Amanda.

"She looks like my ex," Lara sighed sadly, then smirked playfully at him, "But you don't."

He looked at her mildly bewildered, "You... go..."

"Yes," she interjected, "I like both men and women. I'm just a little more choosy about men... and careful about women. I had a bad experience with my last lover."

"Sorry to hear that... the fantasies running through my head were, well,FUCK!," he suddenly screamed and glared angrily at the tv,"CAN'T YOU GUARD A NET?!"

She burst out laughing as he blushed bright red.

"Well, at least that bloke scored... ,"

Lara touched his shoulder, "I didn't say game over."

He leaned back and looked her over, his expression even, calculating.

"Should I pose?" she said playfully, "Are you about to tell me you're a world famous photographer?"

"You've heard that one too often," he said, his voice soft, his eyes gentle, "You don't strike me as the kind who fall for cons of any sort.. do you?"

"I've been through a lot," she said as softly, "but you seem nice, funny, safe."

He smiled, genuinely, "I would say the same thing about you, but in my case I would be telling only half the truth. You are formidable, and I don't just mean in terms of your beauty."

"Well," she sighed, "I can play a mean game of Battlefield. But let's keep talking about my beauty."

He smiled, and giggled slightly, then took a sip of his beer.

"When you walked up, I thought you were going to order a Vodka Martini, shaken, not stirred."

He nearly coughed up his beer, "Why?," he choked, "Because I look like a meshed clone of three of the actors who played Bond?"

"I see only Connery and Brosnan, whose the third?"

"They say I look like a taller Danny Craig... shirtless, from the neck down."

Lara leaned forward, placed her arms on the bar, then hooked her ankles into her stool legs, placed her weight on her arms, lifted the stool from the floor, and using her hips, moved her stool closer to his.

He blushed.

"So," she said smiling playfully at him, pulling her leather strap from her hair and letting it fall across her shoulders, "What part of England are you from?"

"Canterbury, originally."

"Surrey," she said softly, "Abbingdon to be precise, originally."

He stared into her eyes and smiled at her sweetly, "Evan Carter," he finally said, and extended his hand.

"Lara Croft... Very pleased to meet you Evan. You are very pleasant company."

"Well," he said calmly as he raised his pint, "It helps to have such equally pleasant company...guess I'm just an old softy."

"Hope not," Lara muttered as she sipped from one of the four other drinks in front of her.

He smirked at her as she turned beet red.

"I... I... finish your beer." She motioned to the bar tender, "One more of these please... make it a double."


	3. A Good Feeling

She didn't do 'this', she didn't do this - ever. She never drank till she giggled, NEVER let herself get THIS into a hot guy, and NEVER ever contemplated what she was now. She blamed him... and loved every moment of it, of him. He was just so wonderfully distracting to her. His hands, gentle, yet strong, caressed her back; his lips tasted her long neck with such tenderness she felt like she was melting right there on the dance floor. She didn't do this... but she needed to - now.

The music came to an end, and they stepped back from one another, and for a moment just stared into the others eyes, and smiled. He was so handsome, so roguish, yet funny, with a hint of the forbidden that she was now all to ready to throw herself boldly into without any hesitation, or fear. She needed this man, this time, this night. She didn't want to be alone with 'her', the woman with the cold stare in the mirror; the one who was always going to be watching her from now into eternity. She clutched his hard, muscled body to her curvaceous form, felt her ample breasts pressed against his broad chest, and felt him inhale sharply at the sensation. She smiled as she rested her head against his thickly muscled neck, and ran her lips along a small faded scar just below his right ear.

"Lara," he sighed, suddenly seeming to change his mind, "I don't think we should...,"

She closed her lips over his earlobe, "Please don't," she sighed softly, a slight ache entering her voice, "I need this fantasy, more than you know."

"Lara," he insisted, "I'm..."

"I don't care," she suddenly insisted fiercely, her hips grinding harder against his, "I don't care if your married..."

He pulled away from her for a moment, and looked in her pleading eyes and smiled, "Liar," he said softly as he stroked her cheek gently, "Of course you would, and you know I'm not." He kissed her forehead.

She suddenly felt vulnerable, and rubbed her left shoulder, "it's the scars, isn't it?" she said quietly.

He turned her eyes to his, and smiled into them, "What scars?," he whispered, and kissed her full lips so gently she moaned into his mouth.

"I haven't been with a man in almost three years," she whispered softly as his hands caressed her bare arms and he kissed her injured shoulder, "The last was with a guy I met on a hiking trip to Kilimanjaro, and that was nice, but ended there. I haven't had a lot of experience beyond it."

"Perhaps now isn't the right time to end your winning streak" he said, even as he continued to kiss her, moving back to her lips.

She laughed softly, "I cry foul," she sighed into his mouth, "un-sportsman like conduct, unlawful non-use of the hands," she took his right hand and moved it to her hips.

"Lara," he once more started to say.

"Evan," she said to him, locking dilated pupils to dilated pupils, her right hand slid between their bodies, touched him lightly, briefly, between his thighs and smiled, "Why fight us? Your impressive friend down there and I don't know why you insist on denying what you obviously want, and I can assure you, I do to. I won't play games. Please, let us just... just be two people who happen to meet in a bar and have fun together... help each other forget who they are, who they've been; and if it winds up we make love, I'll do my best; and if we wake together... let us see what the morning brings."

"Lara,"he insisted once more."I..."

"Evan," she said her hands wrapping about his waist, "the more you say no... the more I want you; so shut up.. and kiss me."The world was spinning for her now as he clutched her warm, willing body to him, and made her feel happy, made her feel beautiful, special, safe. She took his hand and pulled him from the dance floor and down to the elevators, pinned him against the wall, and began to unbutton his shirt, right there, ten feet from the lobby.

Impressively, he kept his hands on her waist, but made no move for her breasts, or her hips; still determined to be respectful of her, and let her take them where she would.

Her suite was dark, warm, roomy, and she felt free in it, a lot better than she did earlier, now that HE was here. "You want a drink?," she said playfully, "They still have obscenely overpriced minibar... Even Toblerone, Werther's, and ... oh my God, 'Hog Lumps'"

He smiled and stared at her, "Amazing ," he said, "those and 'Twinkies' will be found by future archeologists in the ruins of our great cities."

Lara coughed at the reference.

"Really," Evan continued as he touched her hips and kissed the back of her neck, "It'll be as great a discovery as someone finding Atlantis, the Holy Grail, Yamatai..."

She tightened.

He removed his hands and backed away, "Perhaps its best we say goodnight," he said, and turned to leave.

She spun, grabbed his shoulder, turned him to face her and drove him back on the bed, pinning him under her hips as she straddled his narrow, chiseled waist. She didn't want to give him another chance to even want to get away so she pulled her shirt off and tossed it aside, baring her breasts ad abdomen to him.

He gaped at her naked torso, his fingers following his eye as they traveled over her skin so delicately she was almost too excited.

"You are sublime," he sighed as she slowly began to unbutton his shirt and he palmed her full breasts and lightly massaged them.

She smiled as she opened his shirt to expose his olympic gymnasts physique. She felt his hands leave her breasts for her hips and smiled, "Good man, helping me out of this..." She looked down after he failed to unhook her pants, and frowned.

He was staring at her cauterised wound, his face a mask of astonishment.

She took his hands and moved them once more to her breasts, "Come on, these are a lot more fun."

He continued to stare at the wound, his hands perfectly still.

She sighed out slowly in her drunken frustration, "Please Evan, Please don't look at it, let's keep going please.. Evan?"

His face beamed into a wonderous grin of open admiration, "Was this a fifty cal? Look at my right hip, five centimeters above the bone. Damn gunner ripped the tree I was behind apart... punched a hole right through me, clean through." He grinned wide.

She smiled sweetly at his obvious joy..."Fraid not; this was an iron rod. Still, matching scars."

"Are you a British born Israeli? Masada?"

"No," she giggled, "I don't have that honor."

He studied her wound closer, his face suddenly becoming concerned, "You cauterised it... recently. Lara have you had your jabs? Tetanus?"

"I," she began nervously, "We had all sorts of them before the expedition began," she said as she ran her hands over his chest, trying to regain her place.

He looked softly, deeper into her eyes. "Expedition." He got up, "Gotta use the loo, save my place? er... places?"

"Hurry" she muttered, and flopped down on her belly, slowly peeling off her jean shorts as she smiled at him.

He stumbled toward the bathroom.

She laughed joyfully, and hugged her pillow like a lover, and rolled around on the bed playfully. She felt human again. This was turning out to be a good night for her, all things considered. She finally felt safe, so nice to feel - safe.


End file.
